Murder & Marble Cake

by Nancy McGovern

  Scott was gangly and long haired, with a nerf gun that he proudly held like Rambo. Next to him, Emily stood awkwardly with a battered copy of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory hanging from her hand. She had a bob-cut that reached her ears, and thick, round, black frames that covered half her face.

  “You can see why Jay never paid attention to me as a kid.” Emily grinned.

  “Nonsense, I loved you since the minute I first saw you. I just didn’t realize it for a while.” Jay strode into the diner, with his jacket hanging off one shoulder, and his tie loose. He kissed Emily briefly, and then hopped onto a stool at the counter. With a mischievous look at Scott, he stole a fry from his plate and then another.

  “Hey!” Scott yelped, and ran back to the counter. “Get your own.”

  “Scott’s funny that way,” Emily said to Rachel as the two men exchanged greetings. “He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it, but nobody dare touch his food . . .”

  “It’s all your fault anyway,” Scott shot back. “I have childhood trauma from when you used to finish off all your popcorn at the movies and then eat half of mine.”

  “Your fault for being a slowpoke.” Emily grinned. “Jay, what can I get you? The usual?”

  The bell over the door tinkled, and a couple walked in, hand in hand. The man was generously built, with a French beard and a balding head of hair. The woman, despite being simply dressed in an oversized sweater and leggings, looked as though she’d stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine.

  “Paul, Lacey. Welcome.” Emily gave them a wide and inviting smile. “Let me guess, that’ll be a peppermint mocha with soy milk for Lacey and double espresso for you, Paul?”

  “Actually we just came by because we saw Jay go in,” Paul said. “Jay, can I talk to you in private for a second?”

  “Sure.” Jay stood up immediately, abandoning his half-eaten fry on the plate and drew Paul aside. Paul began speaking to him in a hushed voice while Jay nodded along. Rachel looked down at her plate and tried hard to pretend that she wasn’t trying to listen in. Not that it was any use. Lacey plopped down beside Rachel and began talking immediately.

  “You know, I will have that peppermint mocha, Emily, thanks. The last few days have been such a nightmare, and I really need to de-stress a little.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Emily said, getting the mocha ready. “Anything serious?”

  “I mean . . . Arthur’s death is serious. Didn’t help when Scott here came along implying stuff he shouldn’t imply.”

  Scott dropped his half-eaten sandwich on the plate, placed a few dollars under a glass, and nodded to Lacey. “Probably a conversation you want to have without me standing by, right Lacey?”

  “Oh I very much want to have this conversation with you standing by,” Lacey said. “Paul was so upset when he heard about Arthur. How could you even imply that he might have killed Arthur? And now everybody around town’s talking about it. We’ve half a mind to sue you for slander!”

  “Slander?” Scott raised an eyebrow.

  “You were always a busybody, even in school,” Lacey said. “A girl couldn’t cry in peace without you butting in and asking what’s wrong.”

  “That was one time in ninth grade,” Scott said, “and as I recall, you thanked me for helping you get over your failed test afterwards.”

  “Yes, well, I was just a kid. I didn’t realize I was encouraging your near chronic curiosity.”

  “OK, well, nice talking to you, Lacey.” Scott placed his hat on his head, tipped it a little at Rachel, and strode out of the café. Lacey watched him leave with her hands on her hips and a bilious look on her face.

  “Your peppermint mocha, Lace.” Emily placed it in front of her. “And I’d thank you to leave my brother alone, he’s just doing his job.”

  “I try and understand that, but honestly, he really spooked Paul,” Lacey said. “Not to mention, now Paul suspects me—me—of cheating on him, with Arthur! I mean it’s obvious who Arthur was having an affair with, thank you very much, and it wasn’t me. It was that fluffy baker.”

  “Ah,” Emily said, her eyes sliding from Lacey to Rachel.

  Rachel felt the barb slide under her skin. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much to get spooked about if you’re innocent,” she said, firing back. “Accusing others isn’t a good look on you.”

  Lacey glared at her for a moment, and then her eyes widened. Her entire face went white. “Oh my, you’re Rachel Rowan? The new owner of Aunt Rose’s bakery?”

  “In the flesh,” Rachel said.

  “Oh-I-Oh—” Her mouth fell open and her hand came up to her chest. “I just didn’t recognize you. I wasn’t thinking, honestly I’m such an idiot!”

  Rachel didn’t say anything, and it made Lacey more and more nervous.

  “I didn’t mean it—I didn’t mean you,” Lacey said, desperately trying to recover. “I meant—I meant the baker in the town over.”

  “OK,” Rachel said, sounding entirely disbelieving.

  “Look, I’m really, really sorry. Can I get your tab?”

  “Already paid for.” Cheerfully, Emily held up the dollar bills Scott had left behind.

  “Well, I—” Lacey sighed, and put a hand over her face. “I really put my foot in it this time.”

  To Rachel’s surprise, Emily let out a little laugh. “I won’t take it too hard if I were you,” she told Rachel. “Everybody in town’s been on the receiving end of Lacey’s sharp tongue at one point or the other. Think of it as an initiation ritual.”

  “I’d rather not think of it at all,” Rachel said. She slurped up the last of her latte. “Audrey’s right, there’s two parts to Arthur’s death. The first is the shock and grief of it, the second is the way it’s tangled up people’s smooth lives. Everyone’s spooked, and accusations are flying.”

  “That’s actually what I was trying to tell the sheriff!” Lacey exclaimed. “That’s it exactly. It’s so upsetting to walk down a street and know that people are talking about you as you walk by. Paul’s got a thicker skin than I do, but even he’s upset.”

  “Well, he should be. He punched Arthur just last week!” Rachel pointed out.

  Lacey waved that aside. “Paul can be a bit of an idiot when he’s drunk. But he’d never kill anyone. Even if he did, he’d never get up at seven in the morning to do it!”

  “But he did suspect you and Arthur of having an affair,” Rachel said. “Didn’t he?”

  “Well I didn’t have an affair.” Lacey looked cross. “Arthur was charming when I dated him in high school, and I always thought of him as the one who got away, but I’ve matured since then. I met Paul, and I got the stability I never knew I was looking for.”

  “That’s right, you did.” Paul put a hand around Lacey’s shoulders, and made a big show of kissing her. “Ignore the rumors, honey. People are just mean sometimes.”

  Jay stood behind Paul, smiling beatifically. “Right you are, Paul.”

  “Well what I say is, how do we know it was Arthur having an affair anyway? I heard about the love letter, but ever consider maybe Audrey was having an affair? Then Audrey wrote a letter to her lover, and he’s the one who killed Arthur in anger?”

  “I read the letter, it seemed pretty clear that Arthur wrote it to someone, he even mentioned—” Rachel bit her lip. Arthur had mentioned not loving Audrey in the letter, but maybe that wasn’t something Audrey wanted discussed. She’d almost betrayed her.

  “Mentioned what?” Lacey’s eyes widened a little.

  “Never mind what it mentioned,” Paul said. “Let’s go, shall we? Work waits.”

  “Hey, Paul, Jay mentioned you were in real estate,” Rachel said. “Could you tell me offhand what a good price for my aunt's bakery would be?”

  Paul looked at Rachel for the first time, suddenly interested. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then said, “Well, you should come to my office for a proper talk about that. But I’d say you’d get a pretty tidy sum.”

  “You’re
thinking of selling?” Emily stared at Rachel, and set a jar of water down heavily on the counter. “You never mentioned this earlier.”

  “I’m not thinking of anything,” Rachel said. “But the way things are looking, I won’t be able to start the bakery for at least another week. I may need some money urgently in the meanwhile. I don’t want to sell, but . . .”

  “Oh, there’s all sorts of ways to get your money without selling,” Paul said. “You could remortgage the house, you could hire a partner—anything’s possible. Here’s my card, come drop by anytime.” He handed her a thick, ivory-colored card with his name and address embossed in the center and a gold border along the edges.

  “Thanks,” Rachel said. Bobby Lee’s threat was in the back of her mind still, and maybe it was worthwhile finding out if she could gather the money.

  She was thinking it over when the door slammed open, and Scott walked in—his face red.

  “Rachel, a word please?”

  Rachel gulped. His sunglasses didn’t betray his eyes, but from the way his nostrils were flaring and the vein popping in his forehead, she had a feeling something very bad had happened—or was about to.

  *****

  Chapter 15

  Good News, Bad News

  “So,” Scott said, leading her outside the café. “I’ve got good news and bad news. What would you prefer to hear first? Good news or bad?”

  “I’ll take the good first, thanks,” she said uncertainly.

  “We found the murder weapon,” he said. “It’s a Glock with a silencer.”

  “That’s brilliant!” she said. “Did it go through forensics? Are there identifying marks on it?” Almost immediately, a parallel thought arose in her mind. “A silencer. So the killer was careful about not being overheard. He must have used the silencer when he killed Arthur too. That explains why I didn’t hear a shot, just a muffled sort of bang.”

  “Hang on there,” Scott said. “Don’t you want to know where we found the gun?”

  “Oh . . . yeah, sure.” Rachel’s eagerness turned to wariness. “Where did you find it? That could give us a clue.”

  “We found it in an abandoned warehouse—the Jonas Cannery Co., to be exact.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened, and sweat began to break out on her forehead. Scott must have noticed because he wasn’t Scott, anymore. He was back to being Sheriff Tanner—formal, professional, and aloof. He raised his sunglasses, placing them on the top of his head, and gave her a piercing look with his honey-brown eyes.

  “I think we better take this down to the station, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I—” Rachel didn’t know what to do. Lying was bad, and lying to the sheriff would be worse, that much was clear. But her instincts were screaming at her to deny all knowledge of the place. Then Scott spoke again.

  “Rachel, we didn’t just find the weapon, we found Bobby Lee’s body too,” the sheriff said. “He was shot three times. But I guess you already know that.”

  Rachel felt the world begin to spin around her. “Bobby Lee—he’s dead?”

  “Come on. Don’t pretend,” the sheriff said. “You met him at the Cannery today. Before you deny it, I might as well warn you, we have an eyewitness placing you at the scene and physical evidence—your car’s tire marks.”

  “I’m not denying anything,” Rachel said.

  “Is that a confession?” His voice was low and steely.

  “No, that’s just—I’m trying to tell you, OK? Just let me think!” She clutched her head, trying to process everything. How could Bobby Lee be dead? She had to tell the sheriff everything he’d told her. But before she could continue, the café doors burst open, and Jay strode out.

  “I go to the bathroom for one second and find out you’re harassing my client soon as I come out,” he said with false good cheer. “What’s up, Scott? Hot day, right?”

  “I don’t think so. After all, I’m not sweating. Your client is. But it has nothing to do with the weather.” Sheriff Tanner said. All the good cheer and easy banter from inside the café seemed to never have existed. The man standing in front of Rachel was a predator out to catch his prey- and she shivered at the thought of being in his crosshairs. “Let’s take this down to the station,” the sheriff said. “Before we attract a crowd.”

  Fifteen minutes later, all three were sitting in the interrogation room once more. The combination of the air conditioning along with her sweaty skin made goosebumps break out on Rachel’s arms and back.

  “Need a blanket?” Sheriff Tanner asked, noticing.

  “Thanks, I’m good,” she said.

  “So- what you’re saying is, that it’s all a big mistake?” the sheriff asked, switching on his tape recorder.

  “I’m telling you- someone must have followed me out there.” Rachel said. “To the cannery, that is.”

  “Someone? Who? Your ninja professional killers again?”

  “Bobby Lee told me somebody promised him money in exchange for calling me at that exact time.” Rachel said. “So- yeah. The killer. The killer’s smarter than you’re giving him credit for, Scott.”

  “Him- or her?” The sheriff raised an eyebrow.

  “Whoever it is- regardless of gender- they’re a maniacal genius.” Rachel said. “They planned this whole thing out carefully. Bobby Lee didn’t realize what he was getting into at first. When he did, he got greedy and tried to ask me for money- he promised to expose the killer if I got him fifty thousand dollars. Clearly, the killer found out and murdered Bobby Lee before I could do a thing.”

  “How’d he or she find out?” the sheriff asked.

  “I don’t know!” Rachel banged a fist on the table, frustrated. “Maybe the killer bugged our calls? Maybe I’m being followed. It could be anything.”

  “If I believed you, here’s my question- we were together all day, and you pretended to be cheerful and normal,” Sheriff Tanner said. “Why didn’t you tell me Bobby Lee tried to blackmail you? That he knew who the killer was?”

  “Because . . .” Rachel’s words ground to a stop. What could she say? Because I suspected you, guardian of this town, might be the killer? Because I thought Emily might be, and you’d protect her? Given that she’d spent the afternoon laughing and having coffee with him, that didn’t even make sense to herself.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t,” Rachel said. “I think the events of the last few days just kind of caught up with me, and I did what I always do when something’s too hard, I tried to escape thinking about it. I procrastinated, OK? I put it out of my mind and tried to pretend that things were normal and for a brief, glorious hour, they kind of were.”

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed, and his frown deepened. “You wanted to pretend things were normal?”

  “Yes. It’s stupid. I had a picture in my head of how things could be. I don’t have a home to go to anymore, and when I saw what you have here with Emily, with Jay, with this town—I wanted it. I wanted to be part of it, even indirectly.” Rachel shook her head. “I realize that sounds really dumb, but I’ve been rethinking my priorities for a few months now. I used to chase after money and success, I flew too close to the sun, and I got knocked back to earth in a pretty brutal way. Coming to Swaddle, seeing the kind of life Aunt Rose led—a life that made a real difference to the people she left behind—I guess I acted so normal this afternoon because part of me was trying on that life, the way you’d try on a new jacket to see how it fit. Does that make any sense to you at all?”

  He wouldn’t understand, Rachel thought. How could he, who was born belonging to a place, understand the restlessness of her heart, and its constant need for something she couldn’t even define? She looked up at him expecting to see contempt or disbelief. Instead, incredibly, there was empathy in his eyes. His tone stayed professional, but there was the slightest tinge of kindness to it as he said, “Well, maybe it was a form of shock, let’s leave it at that.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think. So am I still a prime suspect?”

/>   “Well, there’s still the matter of our witness,” the sheriff said. “Jocko Smith, a local ne'er-do-well, was sleeping off a drunken night in the abandoned warehouse. He claims he woke up and heard shouting outside. He peeked out of the window, only to hear you shout, 'You’ll regret this.' He says Bobby Lee was in front of you. Then he dropped a bottle, and the sound of the crash spooked him. He ran outside, got into his car and drove away.”

  Rachel remembered now. When she and Bobby Lee had been talking, she’d heard a crashing noise. It had freaked them both out too. She’d run back to her car and when she looked over her shoulder, Bobby Lee had gone. She’d heard the sound of a car starting, and assumed Bobby Lee was driving away. She’d been wrong. It was Jocko’s car she’d heard. So what about Bobby Lee? Where had he disappeared to?

  “You said you found Bobby Lee dead in the warehouse,” Rachel said. “Inside the warehouse?”

  The sheriff nodded. He threw a photo of the crime scene on the table. Rachel observed grime, broken bottles, and a chalk outline.

  “Did—did you find a phone on Bobby Lee?” Rachel asked. “He called me using a cell phone. Maybe the killer’s number will be among the last dialed too . . .”

  The sheriff shook his head. “We found a wallet, and that was all.”

  “You have to find that phone,” Rachel said.

  “You’re sure there was a phone?”

  “There had to be,” Rachel said. “He’d set the number to private, so I can’t give it to you.”

  “Maybe the network provider can help?” Jay said. “If you get Rachel’s call records, the network can tell you who called last.”

  “Not necessarily. All you need to do is use a blocking code- like star sixty-seven before dialing, and even the networks won’t know you.” The sheriff sighed. “I’ll ask around though. If Bobby Lee had a cell phone, someone must know his number. In the meanwhile, Jay, you better start thinking up a good defense for your client, because I got to tell you, all this evidence isn’t looking good.”